Effective Sales Force Training - What Your Own Experts Can, And Cannot, Teach You

Businesses invest a lot in training their sales representatives, whether as part of a new product launch, or as basic training for new hires.

Much of that investment of time, money, and attention goes into training selling skills. This training, designed to make a better salesperson out of you no matter what you are selling, is often developed and delivered by professional trainers or hired consultants.

The rest of the training effort is devoted to product knowledge, the “what” of the sale. And more often than not, the company turns to its internal experts — programmers, engineers, attorneys, clinicians — to share what they know about the products and services they have created. They certainly know what they are talking about. But they usually are not professional trainers, and that means that they may not be very effective at sharing that knowledge.

After all, there is a big difference between knowing how to do something, and teaching someone else to do that same thing well – as any parent, teacher, coach, or manager can attest.

More often than not, a little professional help — from internal or external resources — can do a lot to maximize the impact of the experts’ portion of the training. Some instructional aids, handy take-away summaries, and professional instructional design can significantly increase the return on investment in product knowledge training.

If your company is developing training around a product or service, keep in mind the strengths and weaknesses of the in-house experts as sales trainers.

Among the strengths, beyond their obvious technical knowledge about the product:

• Your experts are often keenly attuned to the risks of overpromising or misrepresenting the product or service. Legal liability, regulatory action, and the anger of clients who believe they were promised more than was delivered can all be avoided by being aware of the “hot spots” that bring risk to the company. Pay attention whenever your experts insist on saying, or even more importantly, not saying, certain things in certain ways.
• They also know what’s different between your product and the competition’s. They keep up with new developments in their field, so they can help the sales force focus on features of the product that distinguish your product in the marketplace.
• They are often good representatives of important “influencers” in the buying decision. To win the sale, you probably have to have the support of the prospect’s in-house experts — e.g., IT, medical, legal, or design staff — even though the final decision may be made someone else. Those in-house experts are likely to be very similar to your own.

But don’t overlook the most common weaknesses of in-house experts as trainers:

• They often think you have to know everything they know to talk about the product. Not knowing what to leave out is one of the most common failings of the expert who is too close to the product.
• They may not be good at explaining things. They were probably hired for other skills (like research). If you’ve ever had a math or French teacher who was very knowledgeable, but unable to teach you anything, you know what I’m talking about.
• They sometimes aren’t terribly familiar with the practitioner’s point of view — e.g., a medical researcher who leads a great product development team, but has never been a practicing physician who is running a business. They know what new features they’ve built into your product or service, but they don’t always know where the real benefits for the customer are to be found.

Your company has invested a lot in developing expert knowledge around your products and services, knowledge that you must draw on to train truly effective sales representatives. Just don’t leave all the product knowledge training to well-intentioned amateurs. Make sure you consider their skills before tossing them into the classroom, and get them the professional help they need to ensure that your sales forces brings in the customers you are looking for.

Over the past couple of decades, Best Training Practices owner Will Kenny has played a key role in enhancing product launch and sales training results for companies in a wide range of industries. He is highly effective at bridging the mindsets of the product/service developers and the marketing/sales staff. We focus on teaching sales reps the “what” they need to share with their prospects — including what to leave out of the conversation — working with other sales training professionals who develop the “how”, the skills and techniques of the effective salesperson. Best Training Practices can be found at http://www.besttrainingpractices.com/, offering free articles and The Training Tipsheet, our free biweekly e-zine.

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